Raleigh dog battles cancer with help from donors

At age three, Ender was a hyper, happy and seemingly healthy dog. So when he didn’t seem like himself, his owners took him to a veterinarian in September.

“They were about ready to send him home for a bacterial infection and our vet leaned down and touched his abdomen and he goes, ‘Oh my God,’ and I was like, ‘what?’ There was a huge mass in his stomach,” said Megan King, Ender’s owner.

That was the start of a painful process in which King and her fiancé, Michael, learned Ender had Lymphoma.

“He got very sick very fast,” she said.

“It was awful. I mean, he spent a weekend in the hospital. He had two blood transfusions. He was in an oxygen tank for two days,” she said.

“It was just a really crazy aggressive case and it was a really hard few weeks because we almost lost him that one day and they pretty much told us. They called us at work and they were like, ‘Come in and see him because he might not make it through the night. It was really rough to have to deal with,” King said.

The Raleigh couple got Ender and his brother, Echo, at a shelter when they lived in New York at the time.  The terrier-mix puppies were eight weeks old.

“They were actually dropped off in a box together,” she said.

They considered pet insurance at one point, but figured the dogs were young enough to be healthy for years to come.

“We weren’t prepared for that financial blow when we found out he was sick,” she said.

Ender’s cancer will ultimately cost about $6,000, King estimates. That’s money the couple doesn’t have with existing student loan debt. They said they turned to family for loans, asked to pay bills late and took out credit cards to cover the expenses.

“We decided to go with the treatment, even though we weren’t sure if they could afford it. We just said ‘We have to do it.’ He just surprised everybody.”

Their neighbor had dealt with canine cancer in her own dog and shared a book with King, “Help Your Dog Fight Cancer” by Laurie Kaplan.

“She let me borrow the book to kind of look into it and get a base. I mean, we were just lost. We had no idea what to do.”

She learned Kaplan runs an organization called The Magic Bullet Fund. It’s based in New York and gives qualifying dog owners a start-up amount of money to help with cancer treatment costs and helps raise more money to cover the expenses.

The organization helps with a month-long campaign to cover remaining treatment expenses. It does not help with past bills.

All money donated to a particular dog goes to that animal’s treatment when donations are sent in through check. When people pay through Paypal, 10 percent is taken to cover the cost of that service, Kaplan said.

The organization pays invoices from veterinarians. The donations never pass through the hands of the dog owners.

The Magic Bullet Fund, named after Kaplan’s dog Bullet who had Lymphoma, has been around for about six years and has helped about 180 dogs, Kaplan said.

For more information on how it works: http://www.themagicbulletfund.org/SOP.shtml

King said the goal is to raise about $2,800 for remaining costs. Ender faces another two or three months of treatment. The campaign to raise money for his treatment continues until Dec. 1.

“Of course we can’t end it early because we want him to stay in remission as long as possible,” King said.

He is in remission as of about two weeks ago, though the Lymphoma could come back at any time, King said.

Now King wants others to realize there are options when faced with a similar situation.

 “A lot of people don’t know that you can even do anything about it. I’ve spoken people who said, ‘Yea, my dog had cancer and we had to put him down.’ Because, a lot of people don’t even know that that’s an option. It is an expensive option, but there are places out there that will help you,” she said.

Ender is living proof of that.

 “We weren’t ready to let him go and he wasn’t ready to stop fighting it,” King said.

“If he was this sick and got through it then he can get through anything else,” she said.

For more information:

The Magic Bullet Fun: http://www.themagicbulletfund.org/index.shtml

Ender’s Fight on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/endersfight

Ender’s Fight on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Enders-Fight/196529723753461?sk=wall